Section 8: Measuring I-V characteristics of a solar panel
Model 2460 Interactive SourceMeter® Instrument User's Manual
8-6
2460-900-01 Rev. A / September 2014
Set up the solar panel I-V sweep using SCPI commands
This example sequence of SCPI commands generates an I-V sweep on a solar panel. You may need
to make changes so that this code will run in your programming environment.
In this example, the voltage is swept from 0 V to 20 V in 115 steps. The resulting solar panel current
is measured. The current and voltage measurements are stored in default buffer 1 (
defbuffer1
).
Send the following commands for this example application:
Command
Description
*RST
SENS:FUNC "CURR"
SENS:CURR:RANG:AUTO ON
SENS:CURR:RSEN ON
SOUR:FUNC VOLT
SOUR:VOLT:RANG 20
SOUR:VOLT:ILIM 4
SOUR:SWE:VOLT:LIN 0, 20, 115, 0.05
INIT
*WAI
TRAC:DATA? 1, 115, "defbuffer1", SOUR, READ
•
Reset the Model 2460.
•
Set to measure current.
•
Set to measure with autorange enabled.
•
Set to use 4-wire sense mode.
•
Set to source voltage.
•
Set to the 20 V source range.
•
Set the current limit to 4 A.
•
Set to sweep voltage from 0 to 20 V in 115 steps
with a 0.05 s delay.
•
Initiate the sweep.
•
Wait until the sweep is finished.
•
Read the source and measure values from
defbuffer1
.
Set up the solar panel I-V sweep using TSP commands
The following TSP code is designed to be run from Keithley Instruments Test Script Builder (TSB).
TSB is a software tool that is available from the Keithley Instruments website. You can install and
use TSB to write code and develop scripts for TSP-enabled instruments. Information about how to
use TSB is in the online help for TSB and in the “Introduction to TSP operation” section of the
Model
2460 Reference Manual
.
To use other programming environments, you may need to make changes to the example TSP code.
By default, the Model 2460 is configured to use the SCPI command set. You must select the TSP
command set before sending TSP commands to the instrument.
To enable TSP commands:
1. Press the
MENU
key.
2. Under System, select
Settings
.
3. For Command Set, select
TSP
.
4. At the prompt to reboot, select
Yes
.
In this example, a linear voltage sweep is configured to output voltage from 0 V to 20 V in 115 steps.
The instrument measures the resulting current from the solar panel during the sweep.
